First Draft of My Modernism Essay
Jaffo
Michael B. Duff, II
February 24, 2000
In Jack London's The Sea Wolf, Humphrey Van Weyden begins his journey as a
passenger. He is both a literal passenger, aboard the ferry-steamer Martinez,
and an emotional passenger on the sea of life. The novel shows us Humphrey's
transition as he begins to take more and more control over his own life.
Aboard the Martinez, he's like a sleeping passenger. Aboard the Ghost,
Humphrey is awake, but he's still a passenger, at the mercy of its captain.
Finally, in Chapter 26, Humphrey escapes from the Ghost and becomes captain of
his own ship - a tiny lifeboat headed for Endeavour Island. This paper will
explore Huphrey's transition from passenger to captain, and attempt to explain
why he changes so dramatically in Chapter 26.
Humphrey's tale begins in fog, somewhere between Sausalito and San
Francisco. He doesn't realize how precarious his position is until he is
thrust, literally, into the sea. To that point, Humphrey is not blind to his
dependence on others. In fact, he celebrates it, musing that "It was good
that men should be specialists?" (p. 8). He thinks sailing is a simple matter
of "direction, distance, and speed." An experienced sailor comes on deck and
shows Humphrey that he has no concept of the variables involved. Almost
immediately, the Martinez goes down, as if the ship itself were trying to
illustrate the old man's lecture.
Humphrey finds himself in the water, where he comes face to face with his
own mortality, and the fragile nature of human life. Physically and
mentally, Humphrey still has a long way to go, but emotionally, this is his
awakening:
For these were women of my own kind, like my mother and sisters, with the fear
of death upon them and unwilling to die. And I remember that
the sounds they made reminded me of the squealing of pigs under the knife of
the butcher, and I was struck with horror at the vividness of the analogy.
These women, capable of the most sublime emotions,
of the tenderest sympathies, were open-mouthed and screaming. They
wanted to live, they were helpless, like rats in a trap, and they
screamed. (p. 12)
Humphrey loses consciousness, reduced to a state of utter helplessness.
When he's finally rescued by the men of the Ghost, the first thing they say
is, "Why in hell don't you sing out?" (p. 15)
And so Humphrey begins the next phase of his development, under the tyranny
of Wolf Larsen. He's thrown into an alien environment, forced to cope with
the savage whims of crew and captain. Humphrey is conscious of his
surroundings now, actively dedicated to his own survival, but he's still a
passenger, still at the mercy of others. In the first days of his awakening
aboard the Ghost, Humphrey says, "Rest! I never before knew the meaning of
the word. I had been resting all my life and did not know it." (p. 52) The
first step toward consciousness is realizing you've been asleep.
Humphrey learns to function aboard the ship. He learns the pecking order,
develops a strange friendship with the captain, and (after an aborted mutiny),
he becomes first mate. But a favored passenger is still a passenger. As
first mate, he is closer to the source of his dependence, he is superior to
some of his crewmates, but Humphrey is not truly responsible for his own life.
Humphrey is still in a "survival" mindset, living hand to mouth, minute by
minute, just trying to stay alive and sane in this floating madhouse.
All this changes in Chapter 18. A new character is introduced, and this
character forces another change in Humphrey's development. London introduces
the character of Maud Brewster - a new, fragile passenger - just as bewildered
and helpless as Humphrey was in Chapter 2. Maud jolts Humphrey out of
survival mode and raises him to a new level of consciousness. No longer
content to survive and maintain his sanity, he devotes himself to the survival
and sanity of another. He struggles against Maud's innocence and ignorance,
trying desperately to explain the rules in Larsen's floating jungle. "If it
were any other captain except ours, I should say you would be ashore in
Yokohama tomorrow. But our captain is a strange man, and I beg of you to be
prepared for anything - understand? - for anything." (p. 143)
The moment Maud arrives on the Ghost, Humphrey's life becomes secondary. He
sees himself, not as a lone survivor, but as the primary instrument of Maud's
survival. He fights that much harder to live and stay sane, but he does so
for her sake, not his. This apparent disregard for his own life is what makes
him truly alive:
And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid. The death
which Wolf Larsen and even Thomas Mugridge had made me fear, I no
longer feared. The coming of Maud Brewster into my life seemed to
have transformed me. After all, I thought, it is better and finer
to love than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worth
while that one is not loath to die for it. I forget my own life in
the love of another life; and yet, such is the paradox, I never
wanted so much to live as right now when I place the least value
upon my own life. I never had so much reason for living, was my
concluding thought. (p. 210)
Hump continues in this mode until Chapter 26, when the captain, overcome by
some mysterious illness, lets his guard down and gives them a chance to
escape. Although he has matured a great deal in the course of the narrative,
Humphrey is not prepared for the challenges ahead. Without Maud to spur him
on, he might not have even tried to escape. But with Maud in his care,
Humphrey can't be a passenger anymore. In one breathless moment, Humphrey
assumes responsibility for both their lives. He hustles them into a lifeboat
and becomes captain of his own ship.
This is Humphrey's final transition, the culmination of everything that has
gone before. He's not an infallible God-Captain like Wolf Larsen. He makes
mistakes and learns by trial and error, but it is this very act of dealing
with uncertainty that proves his strength. Humphrey is bewildered and
frustrated by the unknowns in the lifeboat, but he keeps trying, fumbling and
fuming through mistakes until he gets it right. This is the fundamental
difference between sleeping and waking, between passengers and captains, and
between men and boys. Captains don't have to do everything right the first
time, but they take responsibility for their failures, and they persevere for
the sake of their crew.
I believe London is saying that confined to male company, men are content
to be passengers - content to serve the strongest animal in the pack. As
tough and capable as they were, the prisoners aboard the Ghost were content to
live under Larsen's rule as long as he insured their survival. Larsen's law
may be capricious and cruel, but following him is still easier than thinking
for themselves. The men rebel against their captain at one point, but this
rebellion seems half-hearted and feeble, as if the men are going against their
fundamental subservient nature.
Compare the tentative, chaotic nature of the rebellion with Humphrey's quick,
decisive escape. The mutiny failed because it didn't have a leader. There
was no strong figure there to direct the action and lead the men to victory.
Humphrey succeeds because he has the will to survive and the courage to face
the unknown. He has a fundamental strength of character that these other men
lack.
But where does this strength come from? I think London is telling us, when
all the artifice is stripped away, men become what women want them to be. Or,
in this case, what women need them to be. Humphrey's love for Maud, his
reverence for her "fragile" nature, and his fierce protective instincts,
inspire him to transcend his limitations and become what she needs him to be.
Humphrey Van Weyden is a bumbling, humble kind of hero, but he is a hero,
nonetheless.
Fundamentally, it is Maud Brewster who forces this change in Humphrey's
behavior. Without her, he might have been content to remain a favored
passenger aboard the Ghost, biding his time for weeks or months, never truly
taking responsibility for his life or his future. As miserable as his life
was, Larsen's brutality provided a kind of shield for Humphrey. Your life may
be brutal and ugly aboard the Ghost, but as long as you entertained the
captain, you would survive.
Concern for Maud's welfare forces Hump to grow up and take risks he might
otherwise avoid. He becomes captain of that little lifeboat, and leads his
crew safely to Endeavour Island. There he becomes a true, functioning adult,
working side by side with the woman he loves. In the end, the primary roles
in The Sea Wolf are reversed, and Wolf Larsen becomes his child.
Work Cited: Jack London, The Sea Wolf (Penguin, 1981).
--
"Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to
become as mediocre as possible." -- Margaret Mead